Posted on December 17, 2011 - by Hubba

Grace Anne

They say that having a baby changes your life, your whole mindset.  I haven’t felt it yet.

Grace Anne had the cord wrapped around her neck when she was born.  There was a brief moment of tension in the delivery room and Mommy got really worried.  There were a group of nurses swarmed around her and they kept up a steady chatter about, well working women stuff, I don’t know, so I didn’t get worried  I figured if they stopped talking it would be time to get worried, but that never happened.  Soon enough the moment passed and baby was fine.  Later I was told that it had been pretty bad, but ignorance is bliss.

Anyway, later I took Grace Anne to the nurses baby factory and sat there.  There was another guy there and we sat kind of uncomfortably in the road while they washed, weighed, scrubbed and sorted babies.  I thought about crying, but I couldn’t think of a reason to cry and I really didn’t want to anyway, so I didn’t.

Grace Anne is almost four months old now, and growing like a weed, or an apprentice sumo wrestler.  She is a gorgeous little baby, in the most, I don’t know how to put this, generic way, like she could be the baby picture on the box of diapers or the play-swing packaging or baby food.  She has a huge smile and likes to look out of the corners of her eyes when she’s smiling.  I think maybe she looks a little bit like me when she does that.

I can point to features of her face that are Bonnie’s, like her nose or her little chin.  From a distance she looks like her sister did at that age.  Other people think they can point to features that are mine.  But most of us agree that she doesn’t distinctly look like either of us.  As her Grandpa John says “she just looks like her little self.”

I sure love her a whole bunch.  I got to be in charge of her the other day, and we had a big time.  We had two big messes in our pants, but we got ‘em cleaned up and were happy after that.

But I never had like a big moment, with rays of light or harps or whatever in the hell you’re supposed to have.  I’ve never been a big moment guy, I can’t really point to any big moment like that.  Maybe I have big moment envy.

Maybe I didn’t have a big moment at the birth because Mom brought so many of the little critters home when I was a kid.  I wasn’t at any of the births besides my own, but every couple of years Mom brought a kid home.  It’s been a few years back now (the youngest is finally in high school) but I remember it well.  I didn’t change as many diapers as one would have thought, but I knew how and what to expect.  I heard little babies scream, fed bottles of milk, burped them, almost everything you had to do with a baby, I had done.

But still, I wanted a big moment, dammit.